


Life's Living Here

by Brachylagus_fandom



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: ToT: Chocolate Box
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-01
Updated: 2016-10-01
Packaged: 2018-08-18 22:33:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8178566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brachylagus_fandom/pseuds/Brachylagus_fandom
Summary: Steven, Connie, and how they fix the Kindergartens.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [NicoleAnell](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NicoleAnell/gifts).



The Last Battlefield grows strawberries. Rose's fountain has flowers. The Moon Temple rests beneath peaceful waves. The Kindergartens are barren wastes where nothing dares to grow. The Beta Kindergarten has blistering heat and a brutal sort of beauty in beaten-down rock; the Alpha Kindergarten is shadowed and silent even though it should have been a fertile valley.

Days after Bismuth returns to her bubble, Connie and Steven find a tattered old book in the back of the library. It's more of a research paper, really, written by Buddy or someone else who had met the Crystal Gems, detailing their powers and theorizing as to how they work. From its conclusions, Connie thinks that there is a way to reverse the damage caused by Gems, particularly to the Earth. The next morning, they are off while the sky is still streaked with pink, promises on their lips and backpacks heavy with the weight of what they think fixing this barren earth will take.

When they finally reach the Alpha Kindergarten, it is nearing noon. They set out the lanterns covered in Gem script Pearl helpfully showed them how to write in the exit holes in a companionable kind of silence; they can sense the ghosts that lurk here, and it feels like talking would make them trespassers in this cradle and graveyard. By the time all of the caves glow from lights meant to never burn out, it is nearing sunset and Lion has to warp space to have them arrive before dark.

The Beta Kindergarten is simpler, if only in approach: countless bubbles filled with Rose's tears and Steven's spit, some with seeds in them, appear throughout the canyon over the course of a week and pop, drenching the dust of shattered gems in healing liquid. When it starts to rain in the desert, animals near a spot they normally don't dare to approach; corrupted gems turn their heads to the sky and drink for the first time in years, let the magic soak into their fur and try to turn them back into the gems they were.

What plants live in the Alpha Kindergarten are sickly, stunted, and stubborn, but they survive everything nature and nurture can throw at them; the Beta Kindergarten gems aren't whole, exactly, but they rose again from a carpet of pieces no larger than sand. Earth has always been a pointless, messy planet, but life persists, and Steven thinks that maybe that's what they've been fighting for all along.


End file.
